Some Design Proposals to Support Independent Life of the Elderlies with Mild Cognitive Impairments who Live Alone.

In Japan, the elderly persons will exceed 30% of population and the dementia will be more than 7 million in 2025. This means the one of five elderly persons will be dementia. Most of them will live in own house with his/her suppose or aged children, or alone. The dementia is progressive disease, so patients lose their abilities gradually in approximately ten years. Mostly there are two types of countermeasure action for the dementia; one is care and the other is prevention such as brain training or cognition plus exercise. Even though they will do many things by themselves independently in the early stage of dementia or in the state of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), they forced to quit daily activities such as cooking or outing by his/her relatives for reason of safety. This inhibition affects as the disuse syndrome, then he/she will lose own abilities faster. As the main symptoms of the dementia is memory loss, the authors focused on prompting behavior by using IoT technology. The sensors in the house are watching the environment and send data to control center in the house. The control center tells the situation by the synthesized voice such as “the stove still burning”, or “the door of freezing chamber is open”, then store the data with time stamp. The resident with memory loss may think about the meaning then make decision and finally do or not do something. The results are stored in the server, so the relatives can monitor the situation of the resident from anywhere

Similarity between compact extremely red objects discovered with JWST in cosmic dawn and blue-excess dust-obscured galaxies known in cosmic noon

Spatially compact objects with extremely red color in the rest-frame optical to near-infrared (0.4--3.0 ${\rm \mu m}$) and blue color in the rest-frame ultraviolet (UV; 0.2--0.4 ${\rm \mu m}$) have been discovered at $5 < z < 9$ using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). These extremely red objects (JWST-EROs) exhibit spectral energy distributions (SEDs) that are difficult to explain using a single component of either star-forming galaxies or quasars, leading to two-component models in which the blue UV and extremely red optical are explained using less-dusty and dusty spectra of galaxies or quasars, respectively. Here, we report the remarkable similarity in SEDs between JWST-EROs and blue-excess dust-obscured galaxies (BluDOGs) identified at $2 < z < 3$. BluDOGs are a population of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with blackhole masses of $\sim10^{8-9}$ M$_\odot$, which are one order of magnitude larger than those in some JWST-EROs. The Eddington accretion rates of BluDOGs are one or higher, whereas those of JWST-EROs are in the range of 0.1--1. Therefore, JWST-EROs are less massive, less active, and more common counterparts in higher-$z$ of BluDOGs in cosmic noon. Conversely, JWST-EROs have a significantly higher fraction of those with blue-excess than DOGs. We present the average UV spectra of BluDOGs as a comparison to JWST-EROs and discuss a coherent evolutionary scenario for dusty AGN populations.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, submitted to ApJ

Large-scale Filamentary Structure around the Protocluster at Redshift z=3.1

We report the discovery of a large-scale coherent filamentary structure of Lyman alpha emitters in a redshift space at z=3.1. We carried out spectroscopic observations to map the three dimensional structure of the belt-like feature of the Lyman alpha emitters discovered by our previous narrow-band imaging observations centered on the protocluster at z=3.1. The feature was found to consist of at least three physical filaments connecting with each other. The result is in qualitative agreement with the prediction of the 'biased' galaxy-formation theories that galaxies preferentially formed in large-scale filamentary or sheet-like mass overdensities in the early Universe. We also found that the two known giant Lyman alpha emission-line nebulae showing high star-formation activities are located near the intersection of these filaments, which presumably evolves into a massive cluster of galaxies in the local Universe. This may suggest that massive galaxy formation occurs at the characteristic place in the surrounding large-scale structure at high redshift.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ Letter

Validation of the everyday technology use questionnaire in a Japanese context.

Background/Objective The Everyday Technology Use Questionnaire (ETUQ), which evaluates the perceived relevance of and the perceived ability in everyday technology (ET) use, has demonstrated acceptable psychometric properties in Swedish studies of older adults. The aim of this study was to examine the reliability and validity of the ETUQ in a Japanese context in older Japanese adults. Methods A sample of older Japanese adults (n = 164) including persons with (n = 32) and without (n = 132) cognitive impairment was interviewed with the ETUQ, including original items (ETs) and added Japanese context-specific items. Data were analyzed using a Rasch measurement model. Results The analysis demonstrated acceptable functioning of the rating scale, internal scale validity, person response validity, and person-separation reliability of the Japanese ETUQ according to the Rasch model. However, evidence supporting unidimensionality in the Japanese ETUQ was not consistent in this sample. The added Japanese items did not significantly change the estimated individual person measures of perceived ability to use ET. Conclusion The Japanese ETUQ seems to be a sensitive tool to evaluate perceived ability in ET use among elderly people in Japan with and without cognitive impairment. Therefore, it could be used in research and clinical practice. Keywords activities of daily living; everyday technology; Instrumental Activities of Daily Living scale; older adults; Rasch measurement modelThe Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (FORTE)The Strategic Research Programme in Care Sciences at the Karolinska InstitutetSwedish Brain PowerThe regional agreement on medical training and clinical research (ALF) between the Stockholm County Council and the Karolinska InstitutetThe research was mainly funded by Health and Labour Sciences Research Grant (Japan)Publishe

MicroRNA-133 regulates the expression of GLUT4 by targeting KLF15 and is involved in metabolic control in cardiac myocytes

GLUT4 shows decreased levels in failing human adult hearts. We speculated that GLUT4 expression in cardiac muscle may be fine-tuned by microRNAs. Forced expression of miR-133 decreased GLUT4 expression and reduced insulin-mediated glucose uptake in cardiomyocytes. A computational miRNA target prediction algorithm showed that KLF15 is one of the targets of miR-133. It was confirmed that over-expression of miR-133 reduced the protein level of KLF15, which reduced the level of the downstream target GLUT4. Cardiac myocytes infected with lenti-decoy, in which the 3′UTR with tandem sequences complementary to miR-133 was linked to the luciferase reporter gene, had decreased miR-133 levels and increased levels of GLUT4. The expression levels of KLF15 and GLUT4 were decreased at the left ventricular hypertrophy and congestive heart failure stage in a rat model. The present results indicated that miR-133 regulates the expression of GLUT4 by targeting KLF15 and is involved in metabolic control in cardiomyocytes